Taxes on alcohol are among the oldest in the UK and are still an important source of tax revenue. In 1992, for example, just prior to the completion of the Single European Market, revenues from excise duties on alcohol totalled over £5 billion, equivalent to 2 per cent on value added tax or 2.5...

The consumption of utilities (for example, energy and water), along with that of other goods such as food, clothing, shelter, health and education, is often thought of as something that has particular distributional significance. This concern is reflected by the range of welfare and regulatory...

The only circumstance under which one can speak accurately about the cost-of-living index is one in which household expenditure patterns do not vary. If relative prices move and households consume goods and services in different proportions, then each household will have its own unique...

This paper tests the published section-level price and weight data used in the compilation of the UK retail price index (RPI) for consistency with the theory of the cost-of-living index. We use a non-parametric test of theoretical consistency and bootstrap statistical methods to estimate the...

This paper addresses the issue of whether tax revenue from alcohol lost through cross-border shopping could be recouped by cutting excise duties. This in turn depends on the elasticity of demand for alcohol. We use data from the Family Expenditure Survey 1978-96 to estimate own- and cross-price...